


Witch

by Haint



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - No Zombie Apocalypse, Alternate Universe - Practical Magic, F/M, M/M, Magic, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, True Love, Unrequited Love, Witches
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-01
Updated: 2016-01-01
Packaged: 2018-05-11 03:51:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5612962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Haint/pseuds/Haint
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For more than two hundred years, the Grimes women were blamed for everything that went wrong in town.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Witch

For more than two hundred years, the Grimes women were blamed for everything that went wrong in town. If a damp spring arrived, or a winter was harder and longer than anyone expected, if cows in the pasture gave milk that was runny with blood or someone's nearly-new transmission started grinding, if a colt died of colic or a baby was born with a livid birthmark, if the war wasn't going well or the local football teams started losing in rows, everyone believed that things must have been influenced, at least a little, by those women over on Dogwood Street. It didn't matter what the problem was—lightning or lies, death by drowning or DUI, a freak snowstorm or a jump in the rate of teenage pregnancy in the county— _especially_ a jump in the rate of teenage pregnancy—people, or at least the sort of people who didn't much use the internet or watch _The Colbert Report_ , began muttering _Them Dog women_ , which was a half-superstitious, half-just mean way of refusing to say their names. It didn't matter if the situation could be explained by logic or science or just bad luck. As soon as there was a hint of trouble or slightest misfortune, people began pointing fingers and placing blame, and at nowhere and on no one more so than the Grimes women, not even gangs or minority groups. Periods of Grimes women-related tension, which would have confounded pollsters, elected officials, and police departments anywhere and everywhere else that wasn't this particular town, resulted in months, even years, where people would convince themselves that it wasn't safe to walk past the Grimes house after dark.

And then a Grimes boy was born.

There was some confusion over whose boy it was, or how he'd even gotten into the house. No one had seen it happen, not a car or a cab or even a suitcase; as far as anyone could tell, the baby had just turned up one day and the first anyone knew anything was when the postman saw what he swore was a baby sitting in the grass with the cats while the Grimes women were in the garden. For a long time most people doubted that the boy was a Grimes at all, for Grimes women had been birthing Grimes girl-children for more than two hundred years, and it was a known fact that there were only girls in that family. Public consternation got loud enough that eventually a social worker was sent out, who put up such a fuss that a couple of sheriff's deputies had to go with her. Deputy Walsh said later at the lodge that there hadn't been anything unsettling or even unusual about the place at all, just a big, cluttered house and two old maids whose names most people had forgotten, who immediately produced both a baby and a birth certificate when asked. Someone protested that the birth certificate was probably forged—because people didn't like to say words like _magic_ or _spell_ around the police, in particular Deputy Walsh, who was known to have no time at all for signs and wonders—and maybe could be that baby was stolen, to which Deputy Walsh said, _Well damn, don't I know a state seal when I see it,_ which was enough to settle the matter for that night. Deputy Walsh was a big man with a big temper; he had tones of voice like other people had fists and batons.

So hearsay went from the Grimes women getting their hands on a stolen baby to the Grimes spinsters, the two that hadn't married, getting their niece's baby dumped on them without warning, just as they'd had their niece dumped on them all those years ago. Of that niece there was no sign, though some people claimed to remember her from before she'd quit school and run off. The general consensus was that she'd been a blonde, and the prettiest girl in school—but the only details everyone knew for certain were that she had dropped out of high school to run away to the city, that she had the Grimes eyes, and that Deputy Walsh had been sweet on her once, back when he was still just Tommy Walsh and the star quarterback, before he'd grown up, put on a uniform, and married the second prettiest girl in high school. The church ladies didn't know what was more scandalous—that there'd been no father named on the birth certificate according to Deputy Harris, or that Nancy Walsh nee Cunningham had scraped up Regina Grimes's leftovers. It didn't help that Deputy Tommy Walsh refused to talk about that baby, just put his teeth together like there was a pearl in there, even or especially when it was his wife asking.

More than two hundred years of tradition had been overturned by one little baby, but for several years, nothing much was different. Once the first burst of shock and curiosity had faded, it was business as usual. The Grimes house stood lonely and forbidding at the end of Dogwood Street, children still used the front gate for their triple dog dares, and the Grimes women routinely placed above minorities and liberal policies as a source of ruination on informal town and county polls. In fact, things were so unchanged that the neighbors worried—what sort of baby never cried at night, or even during the day? What sort of people who had a baby to mind never went down to Kroger's or the Publix for formula and diapers? The receptionist at Dr. Owens's said that the Grimes sisters hadn't been in, much less the baby. What was even going on in there? Who was to even say that the baby was still in there? Perhaps he'd vanished just like he'd appeared, with no one to know.

That was how the social worker and the two sheriff's deputies came to have a standing biannual appointment at Dogwood Street almost entirely by public demand. The sheriff himself had a few questions about exactly how legal this was, but since nobody, including the Grimes women themselves, was complaining, he failed to press the issue. It was an election year, and giving into the nosy neighbor lady population was just good politics, especially when it included the church groups, the PTA, most of the school board, and the mayor's wife. Still, there were a few details that troubled certain minds. Dr. Owens's receptionist stayed insisting that the baby hadn't been anywhere near the office, though the Grimes sisters produced the proper medical documentation anytime they were requested. The Grimes women continued to never frequent any of the local groceries or pharmacies, the postman reported no deliveries, and nights on Dogwood Street were still unnaturally peaceful. For all anyone could tell, there _was_ no baby on Dogwood Street, with only the wellness checks to say different. The black iron fence was high and spiked, the yard was overgrown and largely hidden from prying eyes, and the baby never cried. If the Grimes women had any particular feelings about the addition of a boy to a family that had been nothing but girls back to the Colonies and the first Grimes woman, this unexpected grandnephew, they weren't saying. And if any of the women who went to see the Grimes women now and then knew anything about a baby, those women who went stealing in along the back lanes with the gloaming, afire with their despairs and desires, they had reason enough not to talk.

 

Richard Grimes was practically raised by cats.

This was rather lucky for him, because the harsh truth was that his great-aunts were not good parents. They had done their best with Regina twenty years earlier and that had been an unmitigated disaster. With Richard, they barely resisted their first, selfish urge to pack him off to someone, anyone else. Their lives and house were not built with babies in mind—the Grimes house, with its stairs and its edges and its angles, its crows on the roof and the mice in the walls, with its shadowed corners and unexpected doors, the mare's nest of furniture and mirrors and boxes and rooms and rooms of materiel and impedimenta, was no more or less than a death trap for a small person with no object permanence or depth perception, who couldn't tell the difference between mint and belladonna. If it weren't for the cats, Richard's life expectancy could have been measured in days.

There was always a multitude of cats in the Grimes house. Some were house cats, others not; whether a cat was a domestic or a stray was not a meaningful distinction in that particular household. They didn't have names; instead, from an early age, Richard tended to think of them individually by characteristics, or physical attributes, or even just a general feeling, and called them by noises. He didn't know this was abnormal, and wouldn't understand until much later that most people didn't react well when he called a cat by meowing at it.

While Richard was a baby, the cats treated him like a slightly defective kitten. When he was hungry, the cats knew first and hissed and yowled and bothered the aunts until they came to feed him. When he was cold, the cats took turns lying on him, and when he was hot they dragged him by his blanket into some dark, cool corner, where they licked the sweaty hair of his head into curls. They tried to keep him clean the cat way, and when that didn't suffice they scratched and clawed at the aunts until one of them came to give the baby a bath. The cats more or less kept Richard alive long enough for the aunts to stop being nervous about having a boy in the family and to start feeling guilty enough to get involved, which was fortunate because otherwise Richard might just as well grown up speaking Cat instead of English and then the twice-yearly visits by the social worker would have been the least of their problems.

It wasn't that the aunts were malicious or heartless. They'd taken in Regina with nothing but good intentions, grieving their sister and thinking that at least here was someone who might take up some of the space her mother had left behind. But Regina had been nothing like her mother, and by the time she was thirteen the aunts were exhausted. The period of time between Regina at thirteen and Regina at seventeen were unspeakable. They'd almost been relieved when Regina had run away, something over which they still felt guilty, and it was probably this guilt that had the most to do with their taking in Richard, an orphaned niece replaced by an orphaned grandnephew, and making sure he grew up more man than beast.

As it was, Richard was still half-cat by the time he started talking. A quiet baby, he became a quiet toddler, almost unnervingly so—his aunts were always being startled by his just appearing around the corner or under the table. He had unusually good balance once he started walking, a milestone that occurred downstairs while the aunts were upstairs with no one to see it but the cats, so that the last time the aunts saw him he was crawling and the next time they saw him he was walking. Even _they_ were somewhat disconcerted by this. The aunts observed that he was quick, and agile, that there was something decidedly catlike about his movements, and that he was extraordinarily self-contained. He never cried or whined like other children did. When he wanted something, he either got it for himself or asked for it outright, and if he didn't get it either way he didn't immediately go to pieces. The aunts didn't know what his first word had been, because they hadn't been around for it, but they did know the first word he said in the presence of people, and that was _“Deputy.”_

It happened while Deputy Walsh was holding him. Richard was wearing a shirt and little jeans that had belonged to Deputy Walsh's own boy, hand-me-downs that the man offered so sheepishly that the aunts, who'd been offended into speechlessness, couldn't refuse. His son Shane was bigger than Richard, so the clothes hung on him, but the association was enough that Deputy Walsh couldn't help picking the kid up and holding him.

“Lookin good, chief,” he said, just as he would have said to his own boy, and, already half-in-love, was wholly finished off by the Grimes eyes, which Richard turned adoringly up at him.

“Deputy,” Richard said then, clear and correct, surprising everyone there, including Miss Daugherty the social worker and Deputy Harris. Deputy Walsh wasn't listening—his heart, which had almost stopped with fear that Richard was going to say _Daddy_ , was pounding again, but now with guilt and helpless rage.

“Yeah,” he said thickly, “that's me.” He pressed Richard close, over his heart, the boy's little head under his chin, and took a deep breath of golden, curly hair. Richard's bare little feet tucked themselves over the deputy's belt buckle, as if he wanted to stand on it. “How are ya, Rick.”

It was as if someone had turned on a light in an otherwise dark room. Rick couldn't get enough. He wanted Deputy Walsh to go on holding him forever, and when Deputy Walsh instead put him down, he wanted to throw himself to the floor and scream. He didn't do any such thing—he didn't know what a tantrum was, and was too much a cat to fall into one naturally. So he stood there, eyes wide and feeling sick to his stomach, as the social worker, who never touched him if she could help it, and the other deputy went out the door while Deputy Walsh said their goodbyes for them. On the way out, he put his hand on Rick's head and ruffled his hair, which sent a bolt of pure happiness zinging through him, and then the visit was over and the door had closed behind them.

For the next three years of his life, there was only one person in the world that Rick Grimes loved, and that was Deputy Tom Walsh. It wasn't as if he had much of a choice. He loved the cats, naturally, but there were limits to how much you could love a cat, even _in loco parentis_. He didn't love his aunts. He knew them as largely absent, easily distracted providers of the barest necessities and the occasional comfort, and he had an uneasy grasp of their exact relationship to him, but he felt as much real affection for them as they'd shown him to that point. He learned to eat and walk and talk and go potty from them—after one or two disastrous incidents where he tried to learn from the cats first—but they hadn't taught him to like them, much less love them, or even to rely on them. What they did teach him was a huge, desperate hunger that he didn't quite understand, a need that a purring cat didn't quite fill, however soft and comforting she was. He knew he was missing something, but he didn't know what it was.

When Deputy Walsh started coming by while off duty, the aunts did not complain. At first they watched, conflicted, from windows and doorways as Tom Walsh tossed a small football back and forth with Rick, as Rick led the deputy by the hand into the garden to show him his collection of snake skins and crow feathers, as Deputy Walsh hung a tire swing from the big old oak behind the house, but when it became clear that the man had absolutely no interest in anything but the boy, that he really and honestly did think of the aunts as two old hippies who were probably growing marijuana in the greenhouse or in the cellar, that if anything he only disapproved of them so much because he thought they were doing an almighty bad job of raising their grandnephew, the aunts let them be. It was that much more convenient for them, they argued back and forth, if Deputy Walsh wanted to come by and play daddy now and again, because then they would not have to reproach themselves as much for so utterly failing to play mommy.

For three years, Deputy Walsh came by three or four times a week to see Rick. He always wore his uniform, because he was always either on his way to or from work, and he could never stay longer than an hour, but he was there. He was the one who taught Rick his alphabet, his numbers, and the basic rules of football, and to brush his teeth before bed. He was the one who gave Rick a bed time, and told him not to drink Dr. Peppers for breakfast. He showed Rick how to make his bed, after first helping him pick a room, clean it out, move a bed into it, and declaring it Rick's Room. He was the one who brought over the clothes Shane had grown out of and the books Shane had gotten bored with, the one who helped Rick put up a small Christmas tree in December and reminded the aunts that Rick needed a dentist appointment or needed a haircut or was running a fever and needed a little more attention than usual, from someone other than the cats. Most children dreamed of having no rules; Rick was never happier than when Deputy Walsh stopped by with some new ones.

By the time Rick was six-years-old, he walked like Deputy Walsh, sat like Deputy Walsh, and chewed his gum like Deputy Walsh chewed his dip, spitting with gusto. He tried hard to talk like Deputy Walsh too, which got his mouth washed out with black soap. He jumped to his feet and ran to the front door whenever he heard the patrol car coming up the street, the cats at his heels until they saw who was at the door. For months, the thing he wanted above all other things, more than even a TV to watch the same Sunday football that Deputy Walsh watched, was his own campaign hat. When the deputy brought him one, a beat-up smokey, Rick slept with it on the pillow beside him.

The aunts did nothing to discourage this behavior. If anything, they were relieved that he had someone else to be his example of life, that they were not called on to provide one for him. Sometimes, Rick could almost feel the aunts' desires pressing down on him like a weight—to be left alone, to not be bothered, to not have to worry about a child they hadn't wanted, to not ever endure what Regina had put them through ever again. Against those, the deputy's desires seemed so much more straightforward—to catch whoever was vandalizing the library, to get that raise, to take care of this kid without actually being the kid's father. Rick was vaguely aware, in some deep, inarticulate way, that there were other desires beneath these, that these were just the loudest ones, but that didn't yet mean anything to him. The most he could do was fulfill the ones that he could hear, that he could understand, and so he stayed away from his aunts, fixing his own breakfast and taking his own baths and dressing himself, and he read _The Little Engine That Could_ and _Pete the Cat_ and Dr. Seuss and wore his smokey bear and played football with everything he had.

“Say, Rick,” Deputy Walsh said one day. They were sitting on the porch steps, elbows on knees, their smokeys on and the deputy chewing snuff while Rick chewed a stick of gum. “Don't you never want to play with other boys? Ain't it lonely up here?”

“Naw.” said Rick. He kept his eyes on the ground, watching ants.

“Gonna start school this fall.” The deputy spat in the tall grass. “Make you some friends.”

Rick said nothing. Beneath Deputy Walsh's words, he seemed to hear a low, echoing refrain. _Witch, witch, you're a witch. Witch, witch..._

“Hair's gettin long.” A big hand brushed his head back from his face. From it, a powerful feeling, full of dread and hope, seemed to rise like heat. _Christ I hope he makes some fuckin friends._

That very afternoon, Rick did something he had never done before. He waited, as still and patient as a cat, for the footsteps and the whispering to approach, and then he let himself out of the house by the front door, and hurried toward the front gate.

“Hi,” he called as he approached. He was wearing a t-shirt and jeans and his smokey, and had even put on shoes. “Wanna play?

The four boys on the other side of the gate stared at him.

“I'm Rick,” said Rick. “You wanna come over? I've got a swing in the—”

In a single, quick movement, one of the boys reached down, snatched up a stone, and threw it straight at Rick's head.

_“Witch,”_ he shrieked, and ran. The mouths of the other three boys fell open, but then they chased after the first _._

Rick stood behind his gate and felt the blood trickle down his face. The rock had knocked his smokey off his head. Slowly, he picked up his hat and walked back to the house.

Deputy Walsh's face went tight and angry when he saw the bandage on Rick's forehead. But he said nothing about it, spending most of that visit talking to the aunts about the new school year. Rick slouched in an armchair with a cat in his lap, brooding over his failure. He'd disappointed Deputy Walsh, he knew; he'd shit the bed. When the deputy stopped to rub his head and say good night, Rick hid his face in the cat.

The next morning, there was a boy on the front porch.

 

Everyone in town knew that Deputy Tom Walsh had taken his high school sweetheart's boy under his wing. No one knew what to make of it even as they couldn't stop talking about it, the patrol car parked on the street in front of the Grimes house three or four times a week. Local gossips did what they could, but if Deputy Walsh was the Grimes boy's daddy no one could figure where he'd found the time or the opportunity, since Regina Grimes hadn't been seen in town for nearly ten years and Tom Walsh had never taken enough time off from work to even drive his wife to see her relations in Kentucky. What everyone could figure, without much effort, was that Nancy Walsh had conceived in her heart a hatred of the Grimes boy that could make a rabid dog think twice. Nancy Cunningham had been Regina Grimes's bitterest enemy in high school, hating her as uncompromisingly as only a slightly-less-pretty girl could hate a slightly-prettier one, and Nancy Walsh seemed to have transferred all those feelings of insecurity, jealousy, and spite onto the Grimes boy. There was never any yelling at the Walsh house, the deputy never spent the night at the office or in his patrol car, but the thin, tight line of Nancy's mouth at the hairdresser's and at church told it all to anyone who cared to know. Not even the ministrations of her young pastor down at First Baptist could move her, though anyone who knew the Cunninghams could have told him it was a lost cause. That was one family where Christian charity stayed at home.

The boy on the porch looked like his daddy. He was one of those square, solid children, the kind who as boys were observed to be “healthy” and as girls to be “healthy, bless her heart.” He had his daddy's thick black hair, his daddy's deep black eyes, and, as if to make up for the first two, his daddy's nose. A body knew exactly what he'd look like when he'd done growing: taller, with a driver's license in one hand and a cold one in the other.

Rick and the boy stood on the porch looking at each other in silence. Rick wore jeans, a Falcons t-shirt, and his smokey; the boy wore jeans, a different Falcons t-shirt, and sneakers. The boy's hands were jammed into his pockets.

“Hi,” tried Rick, in a much warier tone than the day before. The boy was huge; if he picked up a rock, there'd be trouble.

“...hi,” said the boy. Slowly, as if he didn't know if he meant it. Under his voice, Rick could almost still hear the fading echo of the deputy saying _Son, you are gonna go over there and be nice to Rick or I tell you what._

“I'm Rick,” said Rick, almost mumbling. He felt his courage flagging. He wanted to make friends, because then Deputy Walsh would be happy, but he didn't know if he had the stomach to make friends with someone who obviously didn't like him. He almost preferred the rock.

The boy said nothing, just stood there staring with his mouth slightly open. _Maybe he's dumb,_ thought Rick, and was opening his mouth to say somewhat desperately, _I know your daddy_ , when the boy said, “'m Shane.”

Relieved, Rick said without thinking, “I know,” and then the two of them stood there at a sort of mutual loss. Rick saw Shane looking at his t-shirt and jeans and realized, for the first time with something like shame, that he was wearing some of Shane's old clothes. Just to be doing something, Rick stuck his own hands into his pockets.

“You like the Falcons?” asked Shane suddenly.

“Yeah,” answered Rick, taken off guard. The Falcons were Deputy Walsh's team.

“Me too.” Shane looked him up and down again. “Ain't you got shoes?”

“Course I got shoes,” said Rick, annoyed.

“Then why ain't you wearin em?”

“Cause there's cats in em.”

Shane blinked.

There was another, embarrassed silence.

The morning was hot, and getting hotter. Late July was when Rick started staying in the house, where it was always dark and cool, or only venturing out into the garden, where he wouldn't do much more than lie in the shade. The porch itself was deep in shadow, but still stifling—he could see Shane beginning to sweat. Rick thought he ought to invite him in, offer him a glass of tea, except for that stupid question about shoes.

“You,” started Shane, and stopped.

“You what?” prodded Rick. He could tell by the look on Shane's face that this was going to be another stupid question, but he wanted to hear it. He wanted to _know_ they would not be friends.

To his credit, Shane seemed to struggle with himself for quite a while before, in an agony of mortified determination, he finally blurted, “Are you a witch?”

Just like that, Rick was no longer so angry but a lot more impressed. But he kept his face blank and his tone steady when he said, “Course not.” Shane's expression both relaxed and fell, and he was opening his mouth again when this time Rick interrupted _him_ to add, “Witches are _girls_.”

Shane's mouth opened, closed. His black brows screwed up, and then he said, “Then are you—are you a _boy_ witch?”

“Well 'm a boy,” said Rick, knowing he was being mean but not feeling bad enough about it to stop, “an a witch is a _girl_ , so if you're askin if I'm a _boy girl—_ ”

Shane's face flushed, and the hands that he'd pulled from his pockets were fists. He practically shouted at Rick, “You know what I _mean_!”

“No I _don't_ ,” Rick shouted back.

They stood there glaring at each other, breathing loudly, feet apart and fists clenched. _He's gonna beat me up,_ thought Rick, and swore to himself that he would not cry, no matter how much it hurt, and that he was not going to give in first, come hell or high water, even if Shane beat him to the ground he'd scratch at Shane's eyes and bite at his fists, he'd give just as good as he got and then some, he'd get his even if he was sick with fear that Deputy Walsh would never come to see him again—

Without warning, Shane dropped his fists and his shoulders. His eyes lowered and he mumbled into his chin, “'m sorry.”

Rick gaped. “Huh?”

“'m sorry.” Shane leaned forward, lifted a foot to scrape the toe of his sneaker against the floor of the porch. “Didn't mean it. I” hesitantly, trying to convince himself as well as anyone else “know you're not a witch.”

Shame swept Rick from head to toe, and he opened his hands and put them back at his sides. “'s okay. They” Rick's turn to hesitate, the habit of feline reserve hard to break “ _they_ all say that too.”

Shane flushed again, but he didn't look angry. “Bill Gainey says he fought you off. Says you was tryin to bewitch him.”

“Wasn't,” said Rick. “He did hit me with a rock, though.”

Shane's eyes went to Rick's head, where the bandage wasn't quite covered by the hat. His black eyes flashed and he said, “Want me to beat em up?”

“What?”

“You want me to beat em up for you?” Shane shifted his weight from foot to foot, as if he wanted to charge off that very minute.

“No,” said Rick, and was surprised at himself for really meaning it. “I don't wanna be his friend anyhow. And you'll get in trouble with Deputy Walsh. I mean your dad.”

“Won't,” said Shane readily. “Dad says some people don't hear nothin but a whoopin.”

That was news to Rick, who said, “Yeah, well, still. What're you gonna do, beat up everyone who throws a rock at me?” That was half the county.

Shane lifted his chin. “Yeah,” he said challengingly, “I will.”

Rick stared at him. _That's stupid,_ he wanted to say, except it wasn't. He abruptly felt extremely awkward, and didn't know how to answer or what to do. _Don't,_ he wanted to say, _you're gonna go to jail,_ except his eyes and his mouth and his hands had turned bashful all of a sudden and he was having some trouble keeping any of them under control. His hands especially seemed to want to hide behind his back.

Again without so much as a warning shot, Shane smiled at him. Everything about it was tentative and shy and hopeful, and from it came the most powerful feeling Rick had had from absolutely anyone before in his life: that Shane deeply and desperately wanted Rick to like him.

Rick's breathing steadied. His hands relaxed, his eyes came up, and he slowly returned Shane's smile.

“You wanna come in?” he asked, voice at least still a little uncertain. “We got ice tea, and we can put as much sugar in as we want. Nobody's watchin.”

Shane's smile widened, magnified. His eyes shone. “Yeah.”

Shane's smile was exactly like his daddy's. Rick liked that.

**Author's Note:**

> Obligatory Practical Magic AU. Work in progress.


End file.
